


to stay a fixed ideal

by nopears



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Curtain Fic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Identity Issues, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 05:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10326224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nopears/pseuds/nopears
Summary: originally posted on tumblr for the prompt: shiro & keith, “you’re supposed to talk me out of this.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> forgive me, for this is not-fic more than real fic. also, it's dumb and domestic and cute and has absolutely no substance, but i hope it makes you smile. 
> 
> the title is stupidly taken from the manic street preachers' _die in the summertime_.

Even if Shiro had stopped to wonder if hair dye were a thing in space – which: it must be, right? They were dying hair back in the dark ages with berries and things, Shiro’s pretty sure, so surely in space they’ve figured out hair dye. Even _if_ he had, which he hadn’t, he wouldn’t normally have picked it up absentmindedly and stared down at the packaging he can’t read like it holds the secrets to taking down the Empire in the alien’s coy smile as they show off their newly bright green hair. If hair is what it is – it’s sort of feathery. Close enough, Shiro figures.

It’s just it’s been a weird day. Allura kicked them all out of the Castle first thing this morning with the words, “get out _now_ before I murder you all.” Which isn’t as harsh as it sounds. Pidge and Hunk nearly blew up the entire shuttle bay yesterday, trying to retrofit something into something – what with the averted explosion, Shiro hasn’t gotten around to prying an intelligible explanation out of them. Lance has been sulking around the Castle all week, sighing and disappearing off on his own a lot regardless of what they’re trying to do, but still always seems to be around to wind Keith up. And Keith’s been trying, he has, but he’s been annoying everyone, too, pushing everyone to train past exhaustion and giving even Shiro half a minute of a lecture on being prepared for what’s coming before he remembered who he was talking to and flushed as red as his Lion.

Shiro had tried to stay in the Castle with Allura, had said, “Princess, please, what if the Galra attack?”

She’d hooked a foot behind his ankles and he was flat on his back looking at the ceiling before he knew what hit him.

“I will be just fine on my own, Shiro,” she’d told him. She offered him a hand up and shoved him into the shuttle with the others before charting them a course for the Space Mall.

So now here Shiro is, staring down at something he’s pretty sure is hair dye from the context, the row of similar bottles lined up on a shelf in what’s something like a pharmacy, all with pictures of aliens with nearly-hair in different colours. He’s remembering the girl in his class in his first year at the Garrison with a bright purple shock of hair. He remembers he’d thought it looked cool before Iverson made her dye it back to blonde; he’d thought so in a slightly envious way he sometimes got when he looked at non-regulation things back then. In the way he gets now sometimes when he looks at pretty things, like people used to tell him he was before all the scars and the limb-loss and the trauma.

And before the white hair. That doesn’t help.

He hears someone coming just a tiny bit too late, shoving the dye back on the shelf and turning towards them with affected nonchalance pasted on his face.

Keith meets his eyes with muted curiosity, glancing at the hair dye for a moment and pausing, taking a moment to consider it. When he looks back at Shiro his eyes go first to his hair and Shiro feels his cheeks warm.

“What’s up?” he asks, taking a step closer to Keith and taking advantage of how that always distracts Keith just a little. Keith’s lashes flutter minutely, he firms his shoulders, and Shiro’s pretty sure he’s succeeded in distracting him. If part of him thinks back to Keith’s bitten off lecture – the one on taking advantage of any opening you’re given and fuck morality – with amusement, he’s never claimed to be above a little friendly vindictiveness.

“Nothing,” Keith says, because like Shiro his first thought is always that something’s gone wrong and he knows to get reassurance that it hasn’t (yet) out of the way first. Shiro had known from the measure of Keith’s footsteps, but appreciates it anyway. “Hunk knows a guy and said he’ll get us free lunch. Want to join us?”

Shiro smiles easily, puts a hand on Keith’s shoulder and squeezes as he turns him back towards the door out of the pharmacy as he nods, saying, “sure, you won’t catch me turning down free food.”

Keith grins at him, leaning into him just a little, tongue flicking out to wet his lips. Shiro feels his pulse jump a little, feels his own smile soften, and silently acknowledges the two-way street that is their weakness for each other.

~

Later, back on the Castle, Shiro gives Keith’s hip a parting kiss as he makes his way back up Keith’s heaving chest. He kisses Keith’s throat and the corner of his lips, lifting his weight off him to where he can grin down at him, pushing Keith’s hair out of his eyes.

Keith’s lips are red and swollen as he smiles back, lazy, the way he only really gets in their quietest moments alone or when he’s just had really good sex. He pulls Shiro down with his fingers tangling in the white tuft of Shiro’s hair for a wet, open-mouthed kiss that Shiro laughs into, wrinkling his nose, saying, “you hate the taste-” and getting cut off by Keith’s insistent tongue.

Shiro lets him have his kiss through several long, slow moments that are way too easy to sink into. Finally, though, he pushes himself up, lips still close enough to Keith’s to brush against each other as he says, “I’m going to go brush my teeth.”

Keith mock-frowns in disapproval, watching Shiro get up, stretch, and walk into the bathroom. He calls, “brush mine for me too,” and laughs when Shiro reaches back through the door to flick him off.

Shiro notices the bottles as he turns back to the sink. There are three of them, one each in purple, pink and blue. He definitely didn’t buy them, and there was only one person who saw him looking.

Keith loops an arm around Shiro’s waist, holding onto his hip with one hand as he reaches past him for their working replacement for toothbrushes and toothpaste with the other. Shiro lays a hand over Keith’s on his hip, tangling their fingers together, and asks, “why did you get them?”

Keith takes his time in answering, waiting until they’re both done brushing to hug Shiro with both his arms, chest pressed to Shiro’s back and presumably standing on his toes so he can dig his chin into Shiro’s shoulder as he watches him in the mirror with serious eyes.

“I got them for you,” Keith says. “For if you wanted to try them.”

It’s hard not to look away from Keith, to not look at what Keith’s watching so intently, to try to figure out what Keith sees with his serious eyes when he does.

“Do you not like the white?” Shiro makes himself ask, and is grateful that Keith’s reaction is muted; his eyes flash with confusion and concern for a split second and he digs his chin in a little harder.

“Don’t make it about me,” Keith tells him. Shiro ducks his head, half a nod and half ducking away from Keith’s eyes.

“Sorry,” he says. Pauses, then admits: “it’s easier.”

The thumb on Shiro’s hip presses in, starts stroking up and down in a tiny, comforting movement as Keith says, “I know,” and kindly leaves off the _idiot_ implied by his tone. He doesn’t say, _I’m part-Galra and you don’t care,_ either, but that’s implied, too.

“You could have got black,” Shiro says, and continues watching Keith’s hands on his skin as Keith replies, “that’s not what you were looking at,” and as Keith’s fingers meet and trace down one of Shiro’s biggest and ugliest scars like it’s the most precious part of him. Sometimes Keith gets like this: intense and gentle. It drives Shiro to the brink every time.

Keith fills the silence with simple reassurance: he’s had Coran look over the ingredients and he’s pretty sure there’s nothing in them, and Lance had suggested doing a patch test just to be sure before using it if he decides to. Shiro spends half a second thinking about getting annoyed that Keith got the others involved before he remembers they’re seven people on a single ship and no one has any secrets.

“I can’t have pink hair,” Shiro says, ignoring the budding twist of nervous excitement he feels at the idea even as it makes him smile. “This is dumb, Keith, I’m having a mid-twenties crisis and you’re encouraging me.”

A kiss to the sensitive spot under Shiro’s ear has him squirming, squeezing Keith’s hand in reprimand for trying to distract him. Keith smiles against Shiro’s skin and says, “I think you’d look pretty with pink hair.” He kisses him again in the same spot and it’s just a coincidence that Shiro forgets to breathe for a moment.

“You’re my second-in-command, Keith; you’re my Spock. You’re meant to be the voice of reason.” Shiro finds himself tilting his head to the side so Keith can get at the skin he’s so intent on kissing. It’s easier than normal to look at himself in the mirror, to see the white shock of hair he doesn’t remember happening and the scars he doesn’t remember getting alongside the ones he does and the arm. It’s easier to bear with Keith’s arms wrapped around him and his distracting mouth holding him together and _here_.

“Allura is your Spock,” Keith tells him. Shiro waves him off; they’ve had this argument before. “ _I’m_ your Bones.”

“You’re supposed to talk me out of this,” Shiro says, meeting Keith’s eyes in the mirror as presses his last open-mouthed kiss to Shiro’s neck before turning Shiro around with the hands on his hips.

“You hate this,” Keith tells him, running his fingers through Shiro’s white tuft. He presses a firm, chaste kiss to Shiro’s lips, then says against them, “don’t ask me to argue against things that might make you happy.”

Shiro shakes his head, half automatically just at Keith’s tone. He kisses Keith, says, “okay,” kisses him again, and adds, “sorry,” and “I won’t,” and “let’s stop talking about my mile deep issues and go back to bed now,” between kisses.

Keith lets himself be pulled that way, lets himself be bundled into bed where their limbs fall tangled and Shiro gentles his touch against Keith’s skin as he nuzzles and nips at the sensitive hollow of Keith’s throat; _quid pro quo_ , after all.

Their last serious moment of the night comes when Keith takes Shiro’s hand, pressing the metal palm to his lips, and says, “I like you so much, you know, and that includes all your issues.”

“That’s so not fair,” Shiro tells him after taking several moments to recover from how that’d made his whole body tingle. “You’re my favourite person in the universe and I still can’t think of anything I can say that’d beat that.”

Keith rolls his eyes, says, “we are not competing,” which is a lie, and, as if to prove it, “every time you say something that dumb I’m going to tell you how pretty you are until you believe it,” and grins at Shiro’s furious blush.

“You’re evil,” Shiro tells him. “I’ll find your weakness one day, too.”

Keith laughs. Says, “sure, babe, and on that day I’ll regret this.”

“No you won’t,” Shiro says.

“No, I won’t.”

~

Some days later, when Shiro leaves his room he passes Lance in the hall and asks if he’s okay because he’s flushed and dropped his towel, then sees Hunk and is concerned when he has to repeat what he said three times before Hunk answers. Coran acts normally and Pidge is too busy with some tech thing to do more than grunt when he says good morning. Allura stares at him, though, until Shiro’s left trying not to squirm in his seat and asking, “are you okay, Princess?” She startles, eyes widening, and hurries to say, “yes, of course. Good morning, Shiro,” in her most regal voice.

Keith, when he arrives, sits next to Shiro close enough that their thighs are pressed together. He takes a look around the table, turns to Shiro, threads his hands through Shiro’s newly coloured hair and pulls him in for a heated, proprietary kiss.

“Pretty,” he breathes against Shiro’s lips when they part. “Told you.”

His smile against Shiro’s lips, as Shiro, predictably, flushes and as Keith goes back in for a more breakfast-appropriate peck, is smugly happy.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me at [my tumblr](https://nopears.tumblr.com/) for more voltron nonsense :)


End file.
